Things You Didn't Know About The Cold War

The term “cold war” goes back to a 14th-century medieval writer named Don Juan Manuel, who referred to the uneasy peace between Muslims and Christians in Spain. But it was George Orwell, in a piece titled “You and the Atomic Bomb,” who applied the term as we know it best to the protracted economic, geopolitical and ideological battle between the United States, the Soviet Union and their shifting allies. The precise dates of the Cold War are the subject of debate, though most agree that it began at some point in the summer of 1945 and continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. Whatever the case, it dominated global politics and culture for the entire second half of the 20th century, and its effects are ongoing. Things you didn’t know about the only war that categorically could have ended all wars through total and complete annihilation, the Cold War. 

Its first casualty was a Christian missionary

In 1942, John Morrison Birch was working in occupied China as a Christian missionary when, by accident, he came to the rescue of Colonel Jimmy Doolittle and his Tokyo Raiders, who had to bail out during the Doolittle Raid, the first U.S. aerial raid on Japanese soil. The men had been hiding from Japanese troops and Birch led them to safety. Doolittle hooked Birch up with his CO, who noted that Birch’s experience and contacts in China, along with his command of Mandarin, would make him an outstanding intelligence resource. From then until the end of the war in the Pacific, Birch served with distinction in the U.S. 14th Air Force. Just 10 days after Japan officially surrendered on August 15, 1945, Birch was sent by the OSS (forerunner to the CIA) on a mission within China. There, he and the men he led ran into a group of Chinese communists who took them prisoner and ultimately executed Birch. As a result, many regard him as the Cold War’s first causality 

U.S. had more communists on its side than the USSR

In 1969, the CIA concluded that there was no possibility of an alliance with the People’s Republic of China. At the same time, Soviet troops were exchanging gunfire with Chinese troops along their shared border, leading China to wonder how far the Soviets would take the aggression, and further, what they could do to prevent it. The solution was to open discussions with their most imminent new enemy’s biggest enemy: the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. wanted China in their corner regarding their increasing troop commitment in Vietnam. President Nixon’s 1972 trips to China proved a diplomatic coup for both countries, and following them both, Henry Kissinger penned a memo to Nixon calling China “a tacit ally,” swinging 870 million communists to the U.S. side. This shaky alliance is considered a pivotal moment in bringing the Cold War to an eventual end. Although the 2007 release of the Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson’s War has spurred some renewed general interest in the Cold War, the topic itself is fascinating - and terrifying. It is almost incomprehensible to imagine that world diplomacy and foreign affairs were directly guided by a concept as staggering as Mutually Assured Destruction. In December 1989, George Bush Sr. and Mikhail Gorbachev declared an official end to the Cold War, but it’s hard to believe either man actually believed this. Fallout can still be seen on many fronts, thanks in part to more than a few examples of strange bedfellows, particularly in the case of the U.S.: the backing of future Chilean monster Augusto Pinochet; the CIA-backed coup that brought the Shah to power in Iran and led to 1979’s Islamic Revolution; and contributions from the U.S., Egypt, the UK, and Saudi Arabia in support of Mujahideen rebels during the Soviet war in Afghanistan which, when ended by the Geneva accords, left the country in ruins and paved the way for groups like the Taliban. 

It cost the U.S. about $8 trillion

Eminent foreign relations historian Walter LaFeber has put the U.S. military expenditures bill for the Cold War at around $8 trillion. This is a reasonable figure when you take into consideration wars in Korea and Vietnam; intervention in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Chile, Grenada, and elsewhere; psychological warfare through covert CIA operations such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom and Radio Free Europe; and, of course, the research, development, testing, and construction of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons (at a high point in the late 1960s, both the U.S. and the USSR were each spending $50 million a day on those weapons). By way of comparison, the U.S. is currently spending roughly $8 billion per month on the war in Iraq. Money spent on the Cold War could fund that operation for another 80 years. 

Source : http://www.uphaa.com